Pierre Gasly scores Alpine’s first points: “The car feels great in high-speed corners”. Encouraging Signs for Alpine as Pierre Gasly Finishes Seventh in Sakhir.

The nightmare of remaining on zero points in the Constructors’ Championship is finally over for Alpine, thanks to Pierre Gasly’s performance in the recent Bahrain Grand Prix in Sakhir. After a surprising 5th place in qualifying (starting 4th due to Antonelli’s penalty), the Frenchman stayed in the top 10 throughout the race and crossed the finish line in seventh place.

Misfortune still played a role
Great satisfaction for car #10 from the Enstone-based team, who commented on his performance ahead of the weekend in Jeddah, on the same street circuit where he finished in the points from 2021 to 2023: “I’m very happy for the whole team and for scoring our first points of the season with seventh place,” he said. “We lost a position on the final lap to Max Verstappen, which is a bit disappointing, but he won last week, so we can only take positives from this effort. It was a good start from fourth on the grid and we stayed with the lead group during the first stint. We were a bit unlucky with the timing of the Safety Car after our second stop for hard tyres. From there, it was flat out to the end, trying to hold off Max, but we ran out of tyres and lost the position. Now we immediately focus on Jeddah, where we hope to be competitive. The car feels good in high-speed corners, I was impressed by how it performed here, so I hope next weekend in Saudi Arabia we can show the same level of competitiveness.” – the Frenchman pointed out.

No points for Jack Doohan
Among the four drivers still without points this season is Jack Doohan, again unconvincing in Bahrain, with his future at Alpine appearing increasingly uncertain: “Today’s result is disappointing, but I’m glad we opened our points tally with Pierre finishing seventh,” added the Australian, who came 14th. “The Soft and Medium tyres felt strong in the race, and we were running ninth after the first two stints on those compounds, which looked promising for us. We switched to Hards to cover some other cars, but the Safety Car came out at an unlucky moment, allowing other cars to switch to fresher, softer tyres. It was very difficult to keep them behind, we struggled a bit with rear grip on that compound and then got a time penalty at the end for track limits. Now we’ll continue to build on the progress the team made this weekend and look ahead to the next race in Jeddah in a few days.” – Jack Doohan concluded.